Troops keep Petes streak alive

FOR PETES' SAKE:

Brampton Battalion forward Blake Clarke and Peterborough Petes' Nelson Armstrong tussle over the puck with Petes' goaltender Michael Guigovaz down on the play behind Armstrong. Brampton claimed the Ontario Hockey League contest 2-1 at the Powerade Centre on Sunday.

The Powerade Centre has not been kind to the Peterborough Petes over the years and Sunday was no exception.
The Petes, struggling to grab the final playoff berth in the Eastern Conference of the Ontario Hockey League, have lost 15 games in a row in Brampton, including Sunday’s 2-1 setback against the Brampton Battalion with 2,362 spectators on hand.
The last time the Petes won in Brampton was back on March 20, 2005 when Jordan Staal scored the winning goal in a 4-1 triumph.
Since then the Battalion has owned the Petes at home, although the outcome of Sunday’s game was in doubt until Brandon Robinson scored the game-winner with less than seven minutes remaining in regulation time.
The winner was set up by winger Matt MacLeod, who was almost lying flat on the ice behind the Peterborough net when he fed a pass to Patrik Machac. Machac then put a perfect cross-ice pass on Robinson’s stick and the big left winger made no mistake.
“I really couldn’t see behind me, but I heard Patty calling for it,” MacLeod said in recalling the setup. “So, I just threw it out there, hoping it went to the right spot.”
While MacLeod and all of the Battalion players and coaching staff feel the Petes have improved in the last few weeks, the game was closer than perhaps it should have been.
“They (the Petes) played pretty well, but it comes down to us starting to play a full 60 minutes if we want to be competing with the top teams,” said MacLeod. “We had a good first period and we played pretty well in the third. We seem to be able to put together a solid 35 or 40 minutes but it’s usually the other 15 or 20 minutes that kills us.”
Brampton head coach Stan Butler said that with five days to practice this week before the Troops play their next game, he’ll have his players working on a few things to try and put up more offence as well as play a little more consistently.
“At the end of the day, we’ve just got to find a way to generate more offence,” said Butler. “Right now, we’re a pretty inconsistent team. We got three out of four points this weekend, which is a start. But we have to keep moving forward.”
The Battalion grabbed a 1-0 lead just past the 10-minute mark of the first period when captain Barclay Goodrow redirected Cameron Wind’s centering pass into the far corner and past the outstretched pad of goaltender Michael Giugovaz, a Brampton native. Peterborough forward Chase Hatcher was serving a hooking penalty at the time.
The score stood that way until late in the second period when Hatcher atoned for his first-period penalty by setting up Eric Cornel for the Petes’ lone goal, tying the game 1-1 and setting the stage for Robinson’s eventual game-winning goal.
The Battalion had 26 shots at Giugovaz, who was named the third star of the game. Brampton goalie Matej Machovsky stopped 14 of 15 shots.
BATTALION BULLETS: Battalion president Mike Griffin, says renovation plans for the arena in North Bay are moving along quite well. Griffin says by the time the Troops move to North Bay, the team will have about 5,500 square feet of space for the hockey operations. The team president also said he believes the franchise will be close to 3,000 in season-ticket sales by the time the 2013-14 season starts. . . MacLeod scored twice and Francis Menard had the other goal as Brampton lost 4-3 in a six-round shootout on Friday night against the Rangers in Kitchener. Machovsky stopped five of six shots in the shootout. Attendance for the game was 7,390. . . Giugovaz is not the only Brampton native on the Peterborough roster. Defenceman Brandon Devlin is also a Bramptonian. . . The Troops are 10-5-2 this season when they open the scoring. Brampton also is 8-3-8 in 19 one-goal games. . . Brampton hosts the Niagara IceDogs next Sunday afternoon, starting at 2 p.m.
Story by Gary Mcarthy